


Loss Ficlet: Girlfriend

by missclairebelle



Series: Loss (Ficlets) [8]
Category: Outlander & Related Fandoms, Outlander (TV), Outlander Series - Diana Gabaldon
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M, Modern Era
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-23
Updated: 2018-06-23
Packaged: 2019-05-27 07:48:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,178
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15019997
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/missclairebelle/pseuds/missclairebelle
Summary: the first time that Jamie calls Claire his girlfriend.





	Loss Ficlet: Girlfriend

##  **Girlfriend  
** **June 2016**  

Jamie was the most punctual person I had ever met. It was like his internal clock was set ten minutes ahead of other peoples’ watches.

On the Friday evening he intended to introduce me to John Grey (“ _tied with Ian as best friend, Sassenach_ ”), he was running spectacularly late.

I was smug.  I was, in fact, probably a touch more self-satisfied than deserved given the number of apologetic phone calls and texts I had initiated in our short time together.

_But for once I was not the tardy one_.

John Grey never said “hi” to me.  Rather, he just interrupted my thoughts as he settled himself on the barstool next to me, saying, “You are awfully pretty for that Viking fool.”

I turned from my glass of wine ( _an ice cold, almost too-sweet rosé_ ), brushing the chunk of hair that fell towards my face behind my ear. John Grey in the flesh had a few years on the man in the photograph kept on Jamie’s refrigerator, but he had the same chiseled jaw and Italian designer perfume advertisement good looks. “You must be John.”

“Must be,” he said, extending a hand and shaking mine. His accent was startlingly like my own, but the London was woven in with _something_ I could not quite place.

“Claire,” I said evenly, holding out my hand.  His handshake was firm and dry and took full advantage of both of his hands –– one gripping mine, the other resting on the back of my fingers.  

“Pleasure.  John Grey.” He ordered a double whisky, neat, and settled back to look at me.  “Where is our Fraser?”

“ _Our Fraser_ is running late. He said ‘just fifteen’ about ten minutes ago.”

“Oh, that does not surprise me. He’s been having one hell of a time at work the last few months.”

_The last few months_.

As close as Jamie and I had become, we had not yet developed the kind of relationship where we knew intimately the happenings of only the last few months.  The weeks and months leading up to the gala from which Jamie took me home were a mystery.

I knew his days at work from an almost daily phone call or volley of text messages.  I knew the amount of the day-to-day drudgery it was possible to learn over a weekend spent together doing all sorts of mundane things ( _cooking, cleaning, shopping, each other, catching up on bad reality television, warring over the crossword_ ).  

I knew some of his distant history –– his family, the scars on his back.  

Yet, there were still years of life stretched out behind him that I did not know.

( _Struggles. Triumphs.  Secrets. Confessions.  Loves.  Disappointments._ )  

To the list, I added:  _the last few months_ _have been a tough time at work_.

John, _the best friend_ , knew these stories.

I took another deep sip of the rosé, clipping my teeth along the lip of the glass in a way that sent a shiver up my spine.

“So tell me about you,” John said, situating himself on the stool next to me.

“What’s there to know really?” I asked in response, hating the small talk and just wanting Jamie to show up.  “I mean, what do you know?”

“ _Well_ , I know that Fraser has not shut up about you since the night you went home with him.”

“Oh for the love of _God_ ,” I mumbled, fighting back the urge to groan. I pressed the heel of my hand to my forehead, a little exasperated. The thought of Jamie introducing the fact of my existence to others with reference to me going home with him was more than a little gut churning.

“ _And_ ,” John continued, “before that, he was constantly talking about this _lass_ he kept bumping into.”

“Oh.” _So Jamie must have mentioned me quite a long while ago._

“Oh,” John mimicked in a not unkind way, laughing a little as he took the drink the bartender offered him. I could see that together Jamie and John would be peas in a pod of teasing and ribbing. “You would think he had met the Queen of England with the way he carried on about you. _Sassy Distillery Patron_.   _Beautiful Sassenach Doctor_.   _Lass Who Stole His Drink In A Pub_. _Gold-Dipped Goddess At A Gala.  Vixen Who Left Her Number **Everywhere**._ ”

“Hmmm.”  I raised a curious eyebrow.  He had it about right. I realized that I wasn’t even the least bit abashed about the blanks John left in his story –– either Jamie had told him precisely how we had started off or he hadn’t.  “Well, Claire Beauchamp, hmmm.  Orthopedic surgeon.  Bad cook, worse handyperson.  Part time yogi.  Full-time wino.  Lover of plants and gardening with only a few potted plants to show for it –– city life and all.  Lifetime wanderer, finally putting down some roots.  Tell me about _you_.”  

“I’m just boring and married –– David, he’s…”

John’s voice trailed off like an awed child searching a limited vocabulary for the right word to describe something almost otherworldly. His eyes dropped to his whisky for a moment.  I could see the slight smile that touched his lips and the softening in his brows as he ran a finger along ring of condensation saturating his cocktail napkin.

“David is _spectacular_. I wake up every day and wonder what I did to deserve him, really.”

My heart skipped a beat and I wondered if I would ever look like that when thinking about the man I loved –– dreamy, infatuated, somehow _honored_. I certainly recognized the tone; it is the one I had adopted whenever Jamie came up in my day-to-day conversations. It was a tone that Geillis had remarked on earlier in the day at lunch when I had gone shmoopy ( _for lack of a better word_ ) over a text from Jamie about going shopping together for his niece’s birthday present.

“We’re adopting.  A baby girl from Colombia, where he is from.  She’s…”

John’s voice faded a bit and he wet his lips before taking a drink.  His teeth sank into his lower lip.  I felt like I was hearing something that he could not keep in but did not necessarily want to share with a near stranger.

“She’s a miracle really.  Jamie has agreed to be the godfather.  Did you know that?”

“I didn’t.”  

My heart stopped and then restarted. 

_A child_.

It was a kind of permanency I had never known.  

As a putative godfather, Jamie was making a promise to be there always for a person, to avoid the pitfalls of fault and blame and to love unconditionally. 

Something niggling at the back of my brain questioned whether I had the capacity for such an emotion, such devotion.

“Well… he has.”  John took another long drink, the pregnant pause neither awkward nor filled with the kind of comfort between friends. “Adopting as a gay couple… well… it’s like a full-time job.  Outside of that, I own some investment properties and the bulk of my time is spent managing them.  David owns a gym; I _know_ you’ve visited.”

His emphasis on “ _know_ ” made my heart stop; it felt like it wasn’t going to start beating again.  The only time I had visited the gym, Jamie and I had squirmed around on the mat below the climbing wall with our hands in one another’s waistbands. _He had convinced me that there weren’t cameras_.

“He _told_ me that you visited.”

We fell again into a quiet silence and he studied me in a way that made me want to check my teeth to see if there was a stray bit of spinach salad hiding from my lunch.

“You know, Claire, you really do have a glass face, like he says.  He never told me what you two got up to, but I assumed… afterhours… young love… your face says you have something to hide.”

“Nothing to hide,” I squeaked into my wine, feeling myself flood with warmth.

“Sure,” John said evenly, smirking at me a little bit. He was turned in his chair now, studying me. “You know Fraser’s been calling you his girlfriend for a few weeks now.”

This time, I turned to meet his gaze, to really look at him. My glass was suspended halfway to my mouth.  “He’s what?”

“Do the two of you actually _talk_?” John laughed, turning his attention to the whisky swirling in his tumbler.  

“Of course we do.”  The flush in my cheeks intensified.  

“The man’s been through hell and back. It hasn’t been pretty.”

“The accident? I know.”

John raised his eyebrows, not looking at me and snorting quickly. “And… _other_ things that I’m sure time will draw out.”

I was stunned silent by the sudden turn of the conversation –– John’s new tone, the quiet concentration he had on the amber liquid in his glass.  He tipped the remainder of his drink back in a single swallow, making only the slightest grimace before taking a deep breath.

“The man’s been living a half-life for a while, Claire.  It is not my place to throw the door open on his closet full skeletons –– and –– oh _God_ … don’t give me that look… he’s not a criminal or a serial cheater. It’s just… the years have not been particularly kind to James. He’s tough, he’s over muscled, he’s confident as hell, but he’s… _damaged_ … for lack of a better word.”

Swallowing, I felt my stomach rebelling against the sweetness of the rosé and the crack John’s words had put in the veneer of easiness that had thusfar coated my relationship with Jamie.

“Speak of the devil,” John said, his voice tinged with humor.

I turned to look.  Jamie was striding across the restaurant with the broadest of grins on his face. When he wound his arms around me from the back, one around my waist and another around my shoulders, I melted into him just a little.  He smelled good –– like summertime and cologne. He looked even better when I cranked my head to look up at him.

“John, ye’ve met the girlfriend then?”

The question and _the word_ , combined with his warm breath on my ear, gave me the chills.

I must have made a face because John laughed, nodding.

Jamie had _never_ said the word “girlfriend” in my presence. He had carefully gathered me up and whispered “ _I more than like ye_ ” a few times. He said it in that way people have of joking but _not_ joking at the same time.

Jamie had called back to the day where I had introduced him to the chief surgeon in my department as my boyfriend. Thereafter, he had jokingly called himself my _boyfriend_ in a teasing way. ( _Third person proclamations of “your boyfriend requires the salt, love” or “your boyfriend’s goin’ for a run” or text messages like “your boyfriend’s lunch meeting is running long, call later?”_ ) I suspected he did it just to see me chagrined.

But _he_ had never put a label on it ( _our relationship_ ), _us_.

I had been the only one to do that.  And there was something distinctly different from calling him my boyfriend and carrying the label of girlfriend.  The term had expectations on it, things I was not sure I could shoulder.

Throughout dinner he was just as affectionate as if we were eating alone –– kissing the back of my hand, tracing up the curve of my ear with his fingertips, hooking his right ankle around my left.

When we paid, John gave me a hug and I hugged him back.  I found that I quite liked the guy and it was obvious that Jamie relied on him. Before we separated, John mumbled, “You better take good care of that patchwork heart of his.”

Jamie was abnormally chatty on the way home –– telling me the minutiae of his day and stopping to pluck a bud off of a flowering bush.  I protested, but he just clicked his tongue, and slipped the stem behind my ear, situating some curls around it.

“Is it fair to assume we’re no’ goin’ to part for the night?” he asked when we got to an intersection where a decision had to be made.  We were more or less equidistant from each other’s apartments.

Blowing hair off of my cheek and taking the flower down from behind my ear, I said, “I was hoping we could have a sleepover.” 

His fingers tightened in mine as he pulled me into his side.  He was a little intoxicated, having matched John’s three double whiskies and downing the remainder of my rosé.

“Aye, me too. It’s been a day. Yours or mine?” Between my brain firing more slowly than normal and his intoxication the words somehow slurred together.

“Mine?” I was tired –– bone-achingly so –– and I wanted nothing more than a shower and a few hours of couch time before wrapping myself around my hulking Scot tucked into my own bed.

“Braw choice, Sassenach, and what I’d ‘ave suggested if offered the chance to weigh in.”  He hiccupped a little and I just shook my head.  

We walked a few blocks in silence, hands twined together, until he stopped so abruptly that I ricocheted back to his chest. “What the fu–”

“Claire… I…” He spun me to face him and his voice trailed off. He just blinked, clearly a little worse for wear with drink.

“Yeah?”

He had been so open with me.  Confessing that he had a hard time with me, feeling like he was on the chase not really knowing how I felt.  

Just the night before, our first weeknight together, he had traced a finger up the sweat-stained curve of my naked body –– hip to jaw –– and said that pinning me down was proving to be a feat. 

“ _You just had me under you for a solid half hour,_ ” I had snorted, trying to change the subject.  Raising an eyebrow that said ‘ _I know that you know that is not at all what I mean_ ,’ he had looked strong and unperturbed by the challenge of me.

But here in the streetlight, fully clothed with faint moonlight illuminating his features, he looked _vulnerable_.

“I need to say somethin’ to ye….”

I waited.  I had never seen him like this: quiet and trying to gather his thoughts rather than somewhat impulsively letting them flow over me.

“This thing between us… it’s at _your_ pace, _Beauchamp_.” The lilt in his voice at the mispronunciation of my last name gave me butterflies.  He pressed his thumb into the swell of my lower lip. “I think ye ken how I feel, aye?”

“Do I?” I asked, voice touched with wonder. I needed to get him off of the topic and concluded that if I could make a game of evasiveness, make it seem coy, he would be thrown off.

_But like a dog with a bone, he wasn’t._

“I think ye ken just fine how I feel about ye. And I _think_ ye ken how ye feel about me, but ye’re for some reason afraid to say it.”

I knew what he meant.   _Love_.

“Have _**you**_ said it to me?” 

He made a Scottish noise, a throaty kind of disagreement with the premise of our conversation.  “I’ve said enough, Claire.”

After a moment, I wilted towards his chest, letting my forehead come to rest just above his heartbeat. Into his t-shirt, I pled, “Can we just go to my place tonight? Leave the heavy stuff for the daylight, for sobriety?”

“I canna promise ye either, but I can take ye home.”

And he did.  

On my bed, with the windows full open, he touched me in a lazy, examining way that left me face down and humming into my mattress.  

When it started to rain and he rose to shut the windows, I had clapped my hand over his forearm wrenched my fingers into the tight line of muscle there.

“The rain, though?” he asked inquisitively, relaxing back into the sheets next to me.

“Fuck the rain,” I mumbled, curlingl into his chest.

Time passed slowly then –– the rain, our breathing, the sweat drying on our skin all melting into a seemingly endless moment.

Eventually I needed to make a confession, to offer him _some_ explanation.

“Jamie?” I asked quietly, late in the night.  

The sound of rain on the window had long since drowned out his breathing and I could not tell if he was asleep or awake. One blue eye opened, sleepy and questioning.

“The last guy broke my heart. Not in a dramatic way. Just a quiet way.”

Blinking slowly, he just nodded.

“I came home with you that night expecting good sex and I… got it.”

In the dark I could feel my cheeks getting pink and I was grateful he could not see me.

“And I did not expect to share anything else of myself with you. I left you my number and…”

“Claire––”

I pressed my index finger over his lips, cutting him off.  “Just let me talk.”

Both eyes open now, lips trapped beneath my fingers, he nodded.

“I expected you to call. I expected to meet up again.  I expected that we would have some fun in bed.  I didn’t expect… _this_.”

The air rushed out from between us at his sharp inhale.

“You’re… good for me.  You challenge me.  I just don’t know if I can be good for _you_. I _know_ that this is _more_ , that we can be _more_. I’ve never felt… like this… He broke my heart, but you opened a whole different chamber of my heart that I did not know could feel things. And it is uncharted territory for me, to put roots down and to feel like I _need_ someone.”

For a long time, we were both quiet.  

He was apparently working through what I had said.

Meanwhile, I was working overtime to figure out a graceful way to take it back, to have him unhear the words. To just make my stupid brain force my stupider mouth say what they both meant: _I love you, I fucking **love** you, alright?_

Eventually Jamie asked, “Are ye about to break my heart?”

I felt something burning at the back of my throat. It was that _word_ , but I couldn’t get there.

Instead, I managed: “Oh God. I sure hope not. Because… I…”

When my voice trailed off, the rain mixed with whatever intention had been there and washed it away.  Minutes later he quietly said, “Good.”

We fell silent again and slept as mirrors –– both with arms between our cheeks and the pillows, our hands resting on one another’s waist.  

Near dawn I roused to the touch of his finger tracing down my throat and the centerline of my body.  

“Ye look so _open_ asleep.  I’d kill for ye to look like this… _be_  like this when ye’re awake.”

I felt tears burning under my eyelids.  He brought his palm to rest over my hip, a warm thumb steadily following the arc of my hipbone.  

“Dinna run from me, Claire. Because Christ… I love ye.”


End file.
